Posts Tagged ‘czars’

I rather routinely call Obama the F-word. No, not that F-word (although the ability to resist doing so is dwindling); the other F-word: Fascist. Barack Obama is a fascist.

I have had quite a few liberals fixate on this word, and – while ignoring the rest of my arguments – proceed to give me a lecture about how my extremism undermines my positions and arguments (which they don’t bother to consider).

I’d like to respond to that. At length.

There are many who would argue that if a politician is not as rabid as Adolf Hitler, that one cannot use this label of “fascist” – at least not unless the target is a Republican (see below). Barack Obama is not a “dictator,” these would argue. He hasn’t launched the world into global war and he hasn’t murdered 6 million Jews (at least, he hasn’t yet). So he can’t be a “fascist.” This argument fails on two parts. First of all, by such a metric, Benito Mussolini wouldn’t be a “fascist” either (except for the “dictator” part). One of the reasons it is hard to have an easy definition of “fascist” is because fascism has taken a different character in every country and culture in which it has been embraced. Hitler is not the norm or standard of fascism; he is merely the most extreme example of its virulence and danger. Secondly, even if we were to take a Hitler as our example, let us realize that Adolf Hitler was a very cunning politician who managed to gain power in a Germany that was THE most sophisticated, educated and scientific nation and culture of its day. What I am asserting is that if an Adolf Hitler were to run for the presidency of the United States in 2012, he would run a platform that we could very easily label as “hope and change,” he would demagogue his adversaries as being the cause for the nation’s plight, he would lie both cynically and outrageously to win votes and he would then proceed to push the country as far as he possibly could toward his agenda. And so here, from the outset, I am claiming that the suggestion that either Barack Obama or anyone else does not qualify as a “fascist” simply because he or she can’t be directly compared to Adolf Hitler is nothing but a straw man.

The question thus becomes, what is fascism, and then it is what is Obama steering us toward?

THE WORD “fascism” is used broadly on the left as a term of abuse. Sometimes it is used to refer to any repressive government, whatever its political form. Most commonly on the left in the U.S., it is used to describe any Republican government–in particular, any Republican government or candidate on the eve of a presidential election.

As an experiment, I typed the words “Bush fascist” and then “Obama fascist” sans quotes. I got 3,280,000 Google hits for Bush fascist (and keep in mind an awful lot of hits would have vanished in the last 11 years as domains purged articles or simply ceased to exist) versus only 2,490,000 for Obama. That means liberals were over 45% more likely to call Bush a fascist than conservatives have been to call Obama one.

And when these liberals express their outrage that I would dare call Obama a fascist and thus lower the discourse, I invariably ask them just where the hell they were when their side was teeing off on Bush for eight unrelenting years of Bush derangement syndrome??? It was rare indeed to see a liberal excoriate his fellow liberals for demonizing the president of the United States.

That might only be a rhetorical argument, as two wrongs clearly don’t make a right. But it remains a powerful one. Liberals have forfeited any moral right to criticize conservatives for using their own tactics against them.

But I don’t simply call Obama a fascist because liberals called Bush one. I call him one because he has exhibited all kinds of fascistic tendencies, which I shall in time describe.

But fascism has a far more precise definition. Historically, fascism is a far-right movementof the middle classes (shopkeepers, professionals, civil servants) who are economically ruined by severe economic crisis and driven to “frenzy.”

In the brilliant words of Leon Trotsky, fascism brings “to their feet those classes that are immediately above the working class and that are ever in dread of being forced down into its ranks; it organizes and militarizes them…and it directs them to the extirpation of proletarian organizations, from the most revolutionary to the most conservative.”

I have no doubt that the irony of these words were entirely lost to the “Socialist Worker” who wrote the article. But allow me to illuminate it for you: think of the most infamous fascists of all time, the Nazis. What did the word “Nazi” stand for? It was the “acronym for the ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’.” Let me try that again, just in case you missed these precious little details: “National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party.”

But ask the “Socialist Workers” and they’ll assure you that the “Socialist Workers Party” had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Socialist Workers. Because that would certainly be awkward, wouldn’t it???

It is rather fascinating that “Socialist Worker” would cite as his authority on fascism and who should be labeled as a “fascist” the Marxist thinker . Allow me to provide one counter statement which is based not on the “brilliant words” of a Marxist, but on the plain simple facts:

“Part of the problem in recognizing fascism is the assumption that it is conservative. [Zeev] Sternhell has observed how study of the ideology has been obscured by “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism.” Marxism defines fascism as its polar opposite. If Marxism is progressive, fascism is conservative. If Marxism is left wing, fascism is right wing. If Marxism champions the proletariat, fascism champions the bourgeoisie. If Marxism is socialist, fascism is capitalist.

The influence of Marxist scholarship has severely distorted our understanding of fascism. Communism and fascism were rival brands of socialism. Whereas Marxist socialism is predicated on an international class struggle, fascist national socialism promoted a socialism centered in national unity. Both communists and fascists opposed the bourgeoisie. Both attacked the conservatives. Both were mass movements, which had special appeal for the intelligentsia, students, and artists, as well as workers. Both favored strong centralized governments and rejected the free economy and the ideals of individual liberty. Fascists saw themselves as being neither of the right nor the left. They believed that they constituted a third force synthesizing the best of both extremes” [Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, p. 26].

So depending on Leon Trotsky or any other Marxist-inspired academic who merely parrots “the official Marxist interpretation of fascism” has rather serious intellectual drawbacks. And yet that is largely what we get. Far too many American academics wouldn’t be so obvious as to use the phrase, “In the brilliant words of Leon Trotsky,” but they give his ideas, theories and talking points total credence, nonetheless. The term “useful idiots” was literally coined to describe these Western “intellectuals.” And their being “useful idiots” is every bit as true today as it ever was in the past.

Consider the REAL “polar opposite”: American conservatives are capitalists, not socialists. They demand a limited national/federal government, not a massive centrally planned state as does socialism, communism and fascism. They prefer the federalist idea of powerful states’ rights against a weakened federal government, not some all-powerful Führer. And to try to force conservatives into some Nazi mold invariably means either creating straw men arguments or citing irrelevant facts (such as that conservatives favor a large military just like the Nazis did, as though virtually every single communist state does not similarly favor a large military “just like the Nazis did”). If you want an all-powerful national government that gets to decide who wins and who loses, if you want to see a system where you have to come to your government for assistance and resources with all manner of strings attached rather than being allowed to depend on yourself, your family and your community, you should embrace the political left, not the right.

By the way, another favorite idiotic red herring for liberals asserting that “Nazism was right wing” was that the Nazis hated the admittedly left wing communists. But consider the fact that Coke hates Pepsi and Barbie Doll makers hate Bratz Doll makers. Are we supposed to believe that Coke is the opposite of Pepsi as opposed to water, milk or orange juice? The fact of the matter is that Nazis and Soviet Communists hated each other because both movements had a global agenda of totalitarian dominion, and both movements were competing for the same rabidly left wing converts.

Pardon me for the following insult, but the only people who believe garbage arguments like these are ignorant fools who live in a world of straw men. Even if they have the title “PhD.” after their names.

The newborn communist republic under Vladimir Lenin proclaimed internationalism as its official ideology[4]. Russian nationalism was discouraged, as were any remnants of Imperial patriotism, such as wearing military awards received before Civil War….

The 1930s saw the evolution of the new concept of Soviet nationalism under Joseph Stalin, based on both Russian nationalism and communist internationalism. Official communist ideology always stated that Russia was the most progressive state, because it adopted socialism as its basis (which, according to the writings of Karl Marx, is the inevitable future of world socio-economic systems). Under Lenin, the USSR believed its duty to help other nations to arrange socialist revolutions (the concept of World Revolution), and made close ties with labor movements around the world[4].

[…]

The Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany became known as the Great Patriotic War, hearkening back to the previous use of the term in the Napoleonic Wars. The Soviet state called for Soviet citizens to defend the ‘Motherland’, a matrilineal term used to describe Russia in the past.

[…]

In 1944, the Soviet Union abandoned its communist anthem, The International, and adopted a new national anthem which citizens of the Soviet Union could identify with.

And then, with the victory secured over fascism, the Stalinist “national socialism” (a.k.a. “fascism”) suddenly became international socialism again. The Nazis’ very name was Nationalsozialistische.

One can be a “Marxist-fascist” and combine and blend elements of both totalitarian socialist systems quite easily, as both the Russian and then the Chinese communists proved. Communism and fascism have far more in common with one another than they have in opposition; especially when you examine the fact that both political systems invariably end up becoming the same big-government totalitarian police state.

So for my first two points – namely that 1) the left has routinely demagogically labeled the right “fascist” even when 2) it is clearly the left that owes far and away the most to fascistic elements – I am going to continue to shout from the rooftops who are the real fascists in America.

That said, it is still not enough to merely point out the FACT that American liberalism has much in common with fascism. And there is a lot more yet to say.

Before I begin spouting particular examples, I therefore need to further approach just what it is that would constitute a “fascist.” And then see who and how the label fits. From The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

The best example of a fascist economy is the regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Holding that liberalism (by which he meant freedom and free markets) had “reached the end of its historical function,” Mussolini wrote: “To Fascism the world is not this material world, as it appears on the surface, where Man is an individual separated from all others and left to himself…. Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual.”

This collectivism is captured in the word fascism, which comes from the Latin fasces, meaning a bundle of rods with an axe in it. In economics, fascism was seen as a third way between laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Fascist thought acknowledged the roles of private property and the profit motive as legitimate incentives for productivity—provided that they did not conflict with the interests of the state.

[…]

Mussolini’s fascism took another step at this time with the advent of the Corporative State, a supposedly pragmatic arrangement under which economic decisions were made by councils composed of workers and employers who represented trades and industries. By this device the presumed economic rivalry between employers and employees was to be resolved, preventing the class struggle from undermining the national struggle. In the Corporative State, for example, strikes would be illegal and labor disputes would be mediated by a state agency.

Theoretically, the fascist economy was to be guided by a complex network of employer, worker, and jointly run organizations representing crafts and industries at the local, provincial, and national levels. At the summit of this network was the National Council of Corporations. But although syndicalism and corporativism had a place in fascist ideology and were critical to building a consensus in support of the regime, the council did little to steer the economy. The real decisions were made by state agencies such as the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (Istituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale, or IRI), mediating among interest groups.

[…]

Mussolini also eliminated the ability of business to make independent decisions: the government controlled all prices and wages, and firms in any industry could be forced into a cartel when the majority voted for it. The well-connected heads of big business had a hand in making policy, but most smaller businessmen were effectively turned into state employees contending with corrupt bureaucracies. They acquiesced, hoping that the restrictions would be temporary. Land being fundamental to the nation, the fascist state regimented agriculture even more fully, dictating crops, breaking up farms, and threatening expropriation to enforce its commands.

Banking also came under extraordinary control. As Italy’s industrial and banking system sank under the weight of depression and regulation, and as unemployment rose, the government set up public works programs and took control over decisions about building and expanding factories. The government created the Istituto Mobiliare in 1931 to control credit, and the IRI later acquired all shares held by banks in industrial, agricultural, and real estate enterprises.

The image of a strong leader taking direct charge of an economy during hard times fascinated observers abroad. Italy was one of the places that Franklin Roosevelt looked to for ideas in 1933…

Fascism is all about the “community,” not the individual. Its message is about the good of the nation, or the people (or the Volk), or the community, rather than the good of a nation’s individual citizens. It is about distributing and then redistributing the wealth and returning it to “its rightful owners” under the guise of an all-powerful state rather than recognizing and rewarding individual achievement. In short, when Hillary Clinton explained that, “It takes a village,” an educated Nazi would have snapped his fingers and excitedly shouted, “Ja! JA! Das ist ES!”

For Obama, the collectivism, community or “village” thing is such a profound part of him that he has literally made it an integral part of his very heretical form of “Christianity,” which very much stresses individual salvation and individual responsibility. Obama has on several occasions put it this way:

For example, in 1995, Obama said, “my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country…” and again in May of 2008, “our individual salvation depends of collective salvation.”

In the Christian faith, there is no such thing as collective salvation. Salvation is an individual choice. It is personal acceptance of Jesus as savior, Son of the living God.

Obama’s is a wildly perverted view of orthodox Christianity. It so distorts true Christianity at such a fundamental level, in fact, that one literally has to go to Hitler to find a suitable similar parallel from a “Christian” national leader. The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther – the most famous German prior to Hitler – had written the most monumental text of German culture prior to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It was called “The Bondage of the Will,” which was considered THE manifesto of the Reformation. According to Luther, the human will was in bondage to sin. The fallen will, if left to itself, will choose what is evil. The human will has been perversely set against the righteous will of God. For sinful human beings, the will is not in a state of liberty but is in bondage to its worst impulses. Luther wrote in this work, “When our liberty is lost we are compelled to serve sin: that is, we will sin and evil, we speak sin and evil, we do sin and evil.” Adolf Hitler infamously turned that key doctrine of Christianity on its head in his “The Triumph of the Will,” in which he exalted depraved human will to an altogether different level of human depravity. Which is to say that Hitler was so profoundly wrong that he proved Luther right.

But getting back to Obama’s profoundly anti-Christian concept of “collective salvation,” the Nazis would have been all over that, enthusiastically shouting their agreement, “Ja! JA! Das ist ES!” Recall the encyclopedia entry on fascism stating that, “Fascism affirms the State as the true reality of the individual,” which was then further defined as “collectivism.” And the Nazis repeatedly called upon loyal Germans to make horrendous sacrifices in the name of that collective.

What the Nazis pursued was a form of anti-capitalist anti-conservative communitarianism encapsulated in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, or “people’s community.”

From the Nazi Party Platform:

– The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:

– In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

– We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

– We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

– We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

– We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

– We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

– We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

– We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.

– The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.

– The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.

– We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.

– We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.

Ah, yes, the Nazis had their “Fairness Doctrine” long before this current generation of liberals had theirs.

You read that Nazi Party Platform carefully, and you tell me if you see small government conservative Republicans or big government liberal Democrats written all over it.

Now, you read the Nazi Party Platform, and given what American liberals want and what American conservatism opposes, it is so obvious which party is “fascist” that it isn’t even silly. Then you ADD to that the fact that fascism and American progressivism (which is liberalism) were so similar that the great fascists of the age couldn’t tell the damn difference.

Since you point out Nazism was fascist, let’s look at some history as to WHO was recognized as fascist in America.

Fascism sought to eliminate class differences and to destroy/replace capitalism and laissez-faire economics.

H.G. Wells, a great admirer of FDR and an extremely close personal friend of his, was also a great progressive of his day. He summed it up this way in a major speech at Oxford to the YOUNG LIBERALS organization under the banner of “Liberal Fascism”: “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.” He said, “And do not let me leave you in the slightest doubt as to the scope and ambition of what I am putting before you” and then said:

These new organizations are not merely organizations for the spread of defined opinions…the days of that sort of amateurism are over – they are organizations to replace the dilatory indecisiveness of democracy. The world is sick of parliamentary politics…The Fascist Party, to the best of its ability, is Italy now. The Communist Party, to the best of its ability, is Russia. Obviously the Fascists of Liberalism must carry out a parallel ambition on still a vaster scale…They must begin as a disciplined sect, but must end as the sustaining organization of a reconstituted mankind.”

H.G. Wells pronounced FDR “the most effective transmitting instrument possible for the coming of the new world order.” And of course, we easily see that the new world order Wells wanted was a fascist one. In 1941, George Orwell concluded, “Much of what Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.”

It was from the lips of liberal progressive H.G. Wells that Jonah Goldberg got the title of his book, Liberal Fascism. Goldberg didn’t just invent this connection: H.G. Wells flagrantly admitted it and George Orwell called him on it. All Goldberg did was rediscover history that liberals buried and have used every trick imaginable to keep buried.

And as a tie-in to our modern day, who more than Barack Obama has been more associated with said FDR?

But let me move on to some real red meat. In just what specific, concrete ways can I call Obama a fascist?

Well, to begin with, there is the signature achievement of his entire presidency, his national health care system (ObamaCare). For liberals, it is nothing but the most bizarre coincidence that Nazi culture had a national health care system that was quite rightly considered the wonder of its day by socialists in America. It is the most despicable of insults that Sarah Palin excoriated ObamaCare as “death panels” – even though it is more precisely a bureaucratic maze consisting of more like 160 separate death panels:

And the “czar” thing hits a very fascist nerve, too. Obama has appointed 39 czars who are completely outside our Constitutional process. Obama signed a budget bill into law that required him to remove these czars, but why would a fascist trouble himself with outmoded things like “laws”? One of the enraged Republicans responded, “The president knew that the czar amendment was part of the overall budget deal he agreed to, and if he cannot be trusted to keep his word on this, then how can he be trusted as we negotiate on larger issues like federal spending and the economy.” And of course, he’s right.

But why do I say it’s financial fascism in 20/20 hindsight? Because of what we just learned: in spite of all the bogus lying promises and the massive takeover “for our own good,” Obama didn’t fix anything. Instead he made it WORSE:

The financial system poses an even greater risk to taxpayers than before the crisis, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s. The next rescue could be about a trillion dollars costlier, the credit rating agency warned.

S&P put policymakers on notice, saying there’s “at least a one-in-three” chance that the U.S. government may lose its coveted AAA credit rating. Various risks could lead the agency to downgrade the Treasury’s credit worthiness, including policymakers’ penchant for rescuing bankers and traders from their failures.

“The potential for further extraordinary official assistance to large players in the U.S. financial sector poses a negative risk to the government’s credit rating,” S&P said in its Monday report.

But, the agency’s analysts warned, “we believe the risks from the U.S. financial sector are higher than we considered them to be before 2008.”

Because of the increased risk, S&P forecasts the potential initial cost to taxpayers of the next crisis cleanup to approach 34 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, or gross domestic product. In 2007, the agency’s analysts estimated it could cost 26 percent of GDP.

Last year, U.S. output neared $14.7 trillion, according to the Commerce Department. By S&P’s estimate, that means taxpayers could be hit with $5 trillion in costs in the event of another financial collapse.

Experts said that while the cost estimate seems unusually high, there’s little dispute that when the next crisis hits, it will not be anticipated — and it will likely hurt the economy more than the last financial crisis.

So much for the massive and unprecedented fascist government takeover.

The inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department’s bank-bailout program says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. That’s more than six times President Obama’s proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010.

Nobody here but us fascists. And we sure aint talking.

Then there are other issues that the left usually uses to attack conservatives, such as racism. Wasn’t Hitler a racist, just like conservatives? The problem is, the liberals are as usual upside-down here. After running as the man to create racial harmony, Barack Obama has instead done more to racially polarize America than any president since other famous progressives such as Woodrow Wilson and FDR. Frankly, if one were to conduct a major study of racial politics, and the setting up in opposition of one racial group against another, just which party has emphasized race and race-baiting more?

Hitler’s Jew-baiting was all about the idea that one race had taken over the culture, had the money and the power, and was using its influence to oppress the people in the banking system and anywhere else that mattered. And Hitler’s constant screed was that Germany needed to confiscate the Jews’ wealth and then redistribute it. With all respect, all the left has done is replace “Jew” with “Caucasian” and making the exact same claims.

And with all this hard-core racist demagoguing, I’m supposed to say that, “Oh, yes, it’s the conservatives who are guilty of demagoguing race”??? Seriously???

Obama has Samantha Powers (the wife of Cass Sunstein, the man who “nudges us”) close to him and advising him on matters of war. According to the very liberal publication The Nation, “She began to see war as an instrument to achieving her liberal, even radical, values.” What if you had an ultra conservative – oh, say a Sarah Palin – openly acknowledged to pursue war and risk American lives to advance her radical values??? What would the left call this if not “fascist”?

But it’s only fascist if Republicans do it, of course.

Also in yesterday’s news is the fact that Obama is the perpetual demagogue– which is a quintessentially fascist tactic. Obama demonized Bush for trying to raise the debt ceiling until he needed to raise it. Now it would be un-American for Republicans to act the same exact way Obama acted. In the same demagogic spirit, Obama personally invited Paul Ryan to a speech just so he could personally demonize him. The same Obama who lectured Republicans that it would be counter-productive to rely on name-calling and accusations in the health care debate launched into a vicious demagogic attack. Ryan correctly said that “What we got yesterday was the opposite of what he said is necessary to fix this problem.” But that is par for the golf course for a fascist. If that wasn’t enough, Obama held a White House conference for “stake holders” in the immigration debate and refused to invite a single governor from a border state.

A Republican equivalent would have had to come out of a deep involvement with some vile racist militia organization to approximate Obama’s background. And liberals would rightly label such a politician a fascist for his past alone.

Here’s a recent Youtube video of Obama’s key union allies on camera saying, “We’re not going to rely on the law,” and, “Forget about the law” as they seek to impose their unions basically whether workers want them or not:

Nearly 200 top positions in the administration remain vacant a full year after President Obama was elected. USA Today reports the backlog puts President Obama behind his predecessors in terms of the amount of time taken to fill key jobs.

The Senate has confirmed 366 Obama nominees, compared with 421 at this point for President George W. Bush and 379 for President Clinton. New York University professor Paul Light, a federal bureaucracy expert, says: “Obama is well on pace right now to set a new record in terms of lateness.”

There is no one permanently in charge of Medicare or Medicaid at a time when the president is pushing health care reform in Congress. Mark McClellan, a former administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says the timing isn’t good, “without a permanent administrator in place.”

Given the fact that he has larger margins of control in the Senate than anybody since Jimmy Carter hamstrung the country in 1976, it is appalling that he has been so unable to send quality nominees to a body that would quickly rubber stamp them.

The biggest joke of all is in the last paragraph. I mean, think about it: Barack Hussein is so eager to totally transform the health care system into the next apparatus of the Marxist state he’s dreaming about that he hasn’t bothered to actually put anyone in charge over the government health care that we already HAVE.

This should be a further tip-off that Obama is disinterested in running the country. He’d much rather radically change it altogether.

Ali Baba had his forty thieves. Ali Obama has at least 31 czars (reported today to be as high as 34) — and counting. Whether Ali OBama’s czars also qualify as “thieves” or not, I shall leave to you to determine.

Reuters has a story entitled, “Obama fashions a government of many czars,” that begins, “Name a top issue and President Barack Obama has probably got a “czar” responsible for tackling it.” Personally, I kind of like the “czar-free” government our founding fathers fashioned for us better.

It has taken President Barack Obama less than eight months to do what imperial Russia could not do in 400 years.

Taxpayers for Common Sense reports that Obama has appointed 31 “czars.” That’s more than ruled Russia during its entire imperial history.

Obama has appointed a California water czar, a Mideast peace czar and a Mideast policy czar, a pay czar (to determine how much the private sector should pay, not the government), a health care czar, an energy czar and a green jobs czar, a Sudan czar, a climate change czar and numerous others, with the promise of more to come. And, if you can’t keep track of all the czars, don’t worry. Obama has also appointed an information czar.

The president should feel right at home when he visits Russia this week.

Few of these czars require any congressional approval, but Obama has given many of them power over cabinet-level officials who are subject to confirmation.

Taxpayers for Common Sense says all these appointments don’t guarantee that the federal bureaucracy will work any better. If anything, the group notes, the appointments simply add another layer to that bureaucracy, something that rarely makes the government more responsive to taxpayers.

More worrisome is the clear trend towards the government, especially the federal government, getting involved in an increasing amount of our daily lives. Equally troubling is the idea that the solution to any problem that faces us is a stronger hand on the reins.

The czars did Russian no favors. We have no reason to expect they will do the United States any good.

Robert Byrd used the words “unprecedented power grab” to describe Obama’s “centralizing authority.” I’m getting really fed up with Obama’s “unprecedented power.” When I googled the phrase “unprecedented power” and “Obama” I got 3,370,000 hits. Which is about 3, 370,000 hits too many. And really scary hits, too, such this one from Money Morning:

The plan clearly grants the central bank unprecedented new powers to conduct comprehensive examinations of almost any U.S. financial company, as well as any of that company’s foreign affiliates.It would also give the central bank oversight of any commercial company that owns a banking charter known as an industrial loan company, according to TheJournal.

There’s also various synonyms for “unprecedented,” such as “sweeping”:

To date, this administration has seemed more interested in penalizing and correcting businesses than in inspiring growth and profitability. Oversight measures are abounding, big and small. Next week the Treasury is set to release its plan for financial regulatory reform, which was meant to simplify the tangled web of overseers now in place – a system that grew up piecemeal as the banking and trading sector grew in size and sophistication. The word is that instead of reducing the number of agencies, Treasury Secretary Geithner will propose two new ones. Why? Because the congressional committees that are charged with monitoring these organizations refuse to give up power. I have to laugh.

When you stop and think about it, Obama is seizing total control of everything while simultaneously arguing his administration really isn’t responsible for anything. That’s what makes me laugh.

Rahm Emanuel, Ali Obama’s chief of staff, said something only a couple of weeks after the election – before Obama assumed his “unprecedented power” – that serves to show that none of this has been a coincidence.

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

This seizure of sweeping, unprecedented power in the name of “crisis” in order to gain political advantage should truly frighten you if you understand history.

Jonah Goldberg wrote,

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency (Liberal Fascism, p. 43).

You can go back to a February 13, 2009 Wall Street Journal article to see that Barack Obama is firmly in precisely such a fascist crisis-hyping tradition.

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates.

Budget office figures released Monday would add $89 billion to the 2009 red ink — increasing it to more than four times last year’s all-time high as the government hands out billions more than expected for people who have lost jobs and takes in less tax revenue from people and companies making less money.

To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable. Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO’s most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 — roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. “Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.

I genuinely believe that Barack Obama – a follower of Saul Alinsky as well as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate when he belonged to it to go along with a long and deep relationship with leftist radicals – is pursuing a “heads we win, tails you lose” strategy. If the economy somehow picks up under all of this massive spending and even more massive debt, then Democrats win big and Republicans lose. If – much more likely – the economy crashes under its own massive weight due to hyperinflation as interest payments on the debt soar, then a starving, terrified people will scream for help from their government. And Democrats will win the pure-socialist totalitarian state they have always envisioned. Either way, Obama liberals believe they will win big.

Ali Obama and his 31 (or is it 34? Incredibly, the media seems to have stopped reporting the growing number!) czars are no friends of America or the Constitution that framed its laws. And whether Obama and his gang of czars intend to or not, their “redefinition of the role of government in our economy and society” will very likely overwhelm our entire way of life and send it crashing down.

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.

Barack Obama has seized control of the auto industry, in spite of the fact that Americans overwhelmingly thought it was a bad idea (with 59% disapproving). He has taken Bush measures to control the banks in order to control the scope of the financial crisis to an entirely new levels. And Obama additionally recently seized “unprecedented powers” over Wall Street:

The plan clearly grants the central bank unprecedented new powers to conduct comprehensive examinations of almost any U.S. financial company, as well as any of that company’s foreign affiliates. It would also give the central bank oversight of any commercial company that owns a banking charter known as an industrial loan company, according to TheJournal.

The only thing that anyone could argue was lacking in labeling Barack Obama as “a fascist” has been Obama’s contrived persona as presented in the media.

But that’s been blown away as well.

It’s somewhat surprising who would blow that mask away, but the fact that 40-year liberal White House Press Correspondent Helen Thomas would be the one to do it shows how obviously and how blatantly the Obama administration has sought to manipulate the media in full fascist fashion.

Helen Thomas: I’m a liberal, I was born a liberal, I’ll be one ’til I die, what else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?

CBC Interviewer: Well, you know, it’s interesting because I’m sure that if somebody from the right was sitting here they would say… if you ask the question what should a reporter be they will say, “Oh, I don’t know, How about objective?”

Barack Obama had a much publicized “town hall” which turns out to have been very “tightly controlled,” with a tightly controlled audience and a tightly controlled list of White-House-approved questions. Barack Obama wants to keep the real tought questions – such as who will pay for the massive government health care, how much will it cost, and will any bureaucrat ever be allowed to get between a patient and his/her physician and make decisions based on statistics rather than medical needs, just to name a few – out of the spotlight. And so he has an event that is falsely presented as an open forum, but in actuality being controlled by the White House for propaganda purposes.

And Helen Thomas, to her credit, came unglued as White House Press Secretary Gibbs cheerfully presented the false face of propaganda as though nothing was amiss:

Gibbs: “… But, again, let’s–How about we do this? I promise we will interrupt the AP’s tradition of asking the first question. I will let you [Chip Reid] ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted in Annandale—“

Chip Reid: “I’m perfectly happy to—”

Helen Thomas:“That’s not his point. The point is the control–”

Reid: “Exactly.”

Thomas: “We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some, but not– This White House.”

Gibbs: “Yes, I was going to say, I’ll let you amend her question.”

Thomas:“I’m amazed. I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and—”

Gibbs: “Helen, you haven’t even heard the questions.”

Reid:“It doesn’t matter. It’s the process.”

Thomas: “You have left open—”

Reid: “Even if there’s a tough question, it’s a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.”

Thomas:“It’s shocking. It’s really shocking.”

Gibbs: “Chip, let’s have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. How about that?”

Reid: “Okay.”

Gibbs: “I think—“

Thomas: “No, no, no, we’re having it now–”

Gibbs: “Well, I’d be happy to have it now.”

Thomas:“It’s a pattern.”

Gibbs: “Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?”

Thomas: “It’s a pattern. It isn’t the question—”

Gibbs: “What’s a pattern?”

Thomas:“It’s a pattern of controlling the press.”

Gibbs: “How so? Is there any evidence currently going on that I’m controlling the press–poorly, I might add.”

Thomas: “Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.”

Gibbs: “How so?”

Reid:“Well, and controlling the public—”

Thomas: “How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they’re going to be called on. That is shocking.”

Helen Thomas has been a White House correspondent for more than forty years. And she has been a doctrinaire liberal who clearly would tend to see things from the perspective of the administration in power. It should be beyond disturbing to you that such a journalist would say, “We have never had that in the White House.” That she would say, This is really shocking.” And it should frighten you that she is “amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency” even as they reveal themselves to be the most manipulating and controlling administration in history. It’s not just about self-righteous hypocrisy; it goes to Nixonian levels of deceit and lust for power.

An attempt by a president to control the press is bad enough; it’s terrifying when that same president has already grabbed unprecedented control over so many other things.

And it gets downright creepy when you consider that this president who is now trying to control the press has actually recieved the most favorable press coverage of any president (nearly TWICE as much favorable coverage as Bush recieved during the same period even while Bush was virtually as “popular” as Obama was). It makes one wonder: what psychological defect, what pathological need to control, would need to exercise so much control?

This is no small matter. We now have a president who seized more power than any president in American history – FDR included. And we now have a Congress that is dominated by the same party as the president, and now posessing a filibuster-proof majority. For the media to be in bed (to allude to a joke Obama made about NBC anchor Brian Williams) with the president is beyond dangerous – especially with our economy in such a fragile state.

Democracy is doomed in a nation that allows propaganda to dominate – as America is clearly doing. Because in a democracy, people are expected to vote their will, and they cannot vote their own will when their opinion is being shaped and controlled by propaganda.

Update, July 3: As further proof that what I am arguing is true, take something that happened just yesterday, following the publication of this article.

The leftist Washington Post cancelled a “salon” event in the wake of an uproar over the sheer raving inappropriateness of such an event. The Newspaper planned to sell access to reporters and Obama administration officials to lobbyist for sums of up to $250,000. A quote from the Politico article breaking the story:

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

The newspaper has an incredibly flimsy excuse for this selling of its credibility, but the entire fiasco merely amounts to yet another of the complete abandonment of journalistic ethics and integrity of the mainstream media.

This is a blurring of the White House and the press that is intended to sell policy to the public. It is dangerous. It is facsist.

The good thing is that more and more people are now beginning to realize that Barack Obama is leading their country off a cliff into an economic fiasco that we will likely never recover from; the bad news is that it may already bee too late.

Right now, we’ve got “czars” appointed by Obama that are running roughshod over entire industries with absolutely no congressional or people’s oversight whatsoever. There are now FIFTEEN “czars” accountable to no one but Obama: a drug czar; an energy and environment czar; a health czar; an urban affairs czar; an economic czar; a regulatory czar; a technology czar; a government performance czar; a border czar, a WMD policy czar; an intelligence czar; a car czar; a Great Lakes czar; a Stimulus czar; and now a Cyber czar. Again, Czars dominating industrustries and whole sections of the massive government infastructure who are accountable to no one but the president.

To quote J.R. Dieckmann who describes the new “cyber security czar” and in so doing denounces the entire mindset that creates them in the first place:

We have seen the tactic used by this administration over and over again — find or create a crisis, then violate the people’s liberties to deal with it. We saw it with the banking industry. We saw it with the mortgage industry. We’re seeing it with the auto industry and the energy industry, the global warming hoax, and many others. This is a president who wants the federal government to control everything of any significance. Controlling the Internet would be most helpful to him in forcing his Marxist agenda down the throats of the American citizens.

[By the way, even as Obama plunges the economy of the nation into ruin by pursuing the radical global warming agenda, a new NASA study confirms that – surprise – the sun, NOT man, has been responsible for warming. Not that the obvious facts have ever mattered to liberals].

CARACAS, June 2 (Reuters) – Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp. […]

“Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right,” Chavez joked on a live television broadcast.

Maybe Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro think it’s a joke; I don’t think there’s anything funny about it. I don’t think there’s anything funny about Obama’s using czars answerable only to him to shred the Constitution to set aside firmly established bankruptcy and contract law in order to make a political payoff to his union constituency.

Who did Obama appoint to run his nationalized Government Motors? A 31-year old punk named Brian Deese who has never run anything but liberal political campaign propaganda:

Policy analyst at liberal think tanks like Center for American Progress

Never run a business

Doesn’t have a law degree

Has gone on public record as being scared of his work capabilities already in his appointment in the auto task force.

THIS is the guy who “finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism” (in the exact words of the New York Times)? How do we not deserve to go the way of the Dodo bird when we do crap like this?

Liberals who used to decry Bush for his imperial tactics are an insult unto themselves; Bush’s “abuses of power” are to Obama’s what a pea-shooter is to a hydrogen bomb. Obama is continuing the things that liberals have screamed the most about (including domestic eavesdropping which he once opposed; including the right to use enhanced interrogation methods should he deem it appropriate; including the use of rendition to send terrorist suspects to countries that will employ harsh interrogations; including the use of military commissions he himself condemned; including the right to hold people indefinitely without trial that he previously had demonized. The ONLY difference between Bush and Obama on these issues is that Bush wasn’t a pompous, self-righteous, arrogant liar and demagogue, as Obama has now proven himself to be. Meanwhile, on top of all the “abuses of power” liberals attacked Bush over, Obama has further taken it upon himself to abuse federal power like no one before him had ever even dreamed.

Bush opened the door to this crap; Barrack Hussein has essentially driven a suicide-bomber’s truck right through that door – and is in the process of driving his bomb into the very heart of our economy, our infrastructure, and our entire way of life.

And more and more people are FINALLY starting to become angrier and angrier about it. Not enough to stop it. But enough to give one hope that we’re not as insane as it has previously appeared.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 34% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of 0. That’s the highest level of strong disapproval and the lowest overall rating yet recorded (see trends).

The President’s ratings have slipped since General Motors filed for bankruptcy to initiate a new government bailout and takeover. Just 26% of Americans believe the GM bailout was a good idea and nearly as many support a boycott of GM products. It remains to be seen whether the dip in the President’s numbers is a temporary reaction to recent news or something more substantive.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.

Steven Moore, the senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, summarizes what he calls “onslaught of the left” and concludes:

Yikes! That’s a big dosage of economic cyanide the left wants America to swallow. If this whole agenda goes through, in 2009 the federal budget will run the budget deficit to $2.2 trillion — in a single year. That’s more borrowing in twelve months than the federal government did in 200 years!

How do we possibly survive this crushing level of debt? “Economic cyanide,” indeed.

Obama campaigned as this country’s “messiah” or savior. But who will be able to save us from Obama, once his ruinous policies explode?